Boyne
Ian Boyne, Contributor
THE COUNTRY has finally achieved some consensus on how crime should be tackled and the Government, appropriately, is being commended for responding with a comprehensive, integrated, multi-agency approach to crime, embracing the legislative, socio-economic and hard policing facets of the problem.
The interest groups represented on the two committees recently announced by National Security Minister, Dr. Peter Phillips, are indeed, broad and wide-ranging. But there is one major critical, though not surprising, omission considering that the crime-fighting strategists are middle-class persons: Representatives of the dancehall, the primary socialisation agent in the inner city.
We have to find a way to bring in the deejays, promoters, producers and sound system operators on the anti-crime team. There is no way this country can successfully change the culture of violence in the inner cities without changing the culture of the dancehall. We underestimate to our own peril the threat of the Jamaican dancehall culture to peace.
The intelligentsia and the elite who hold power in Jamaica are far removed from the dancehall culture. Many middle and upper-middle class persons scorn the dancehall and would have no doubt that it probably has harmful effects on ghetto youth just because they might have heard the sheer crudeness, inanity and vulgarity coming from some sound systems they pass or on the radio. But because they could never understand much of what is being said on the tracks anyway, they are hardly in a position to know just how dangerous it really is to peace and order.
The section of the intelligentsia which has spent the time examining the dancehall and which should be in a better position to evaluate, the University of the West Indies (UWI) intellectuals, have failed this country miserably by their sloppy analysis, philosophical and cultural naiveté and myopia.
Some media practitioners who know what really takes place in the dancehall, cannot decry it because they have prostituted themselves to dancehall producers and promoters who pay them to play their songs and generally to "big them up".
So the people with state and business power who could blow the whistle on those who are warping the minds of our youth, are in the dark about what takes place in the dancehall and hence you have respectable companies promoting dancehall sessions which war against the very values which those company executives pontificate about in their service clubs and when speaking to polite society.
Some media managers and owners have absolutely no idea who the artistes are who are being promoted in their media. So they would not know that their efforts in promoting PALS, order in downtown Kingston and peace, tolerance and greater respect in Jamaica, are being undermined by their companies' promotion of artistes who are purveyors of debauchery, filth and violence.
There are certain standard fallacious arguments which are employed by the UWI intellectuals and other defenders of the dancehall when its dark side is pointed out. The first reaction is that the criticisms usually represent middle-class prejudice, snobbery and contempt for the masses and their culture. We middle-class people don't respect the people and hence we start from a position that their cultural products are vulgar. But this reaction is a slander on the people of the inner city.
The values portrayed by negative dancehall culture (which, remember is not all of the dancehall), does not represent all the people in the inner city. I am saying that crudeness, vulgar behaviour, sexism and the promotion of violence is not a "reflection of inner city culture", as though we are talking about some fixed, unalterable, inevitable given of ghetto life. That is a slander fostered by the UWI intellectuals and others.
Besides, the view that the deejays are merely "talking about their reality" and "reflecting everyday life" is a piece of deterministic folly which disrespects them by saying essentially, "These fellows can't really do any better; they are from the ghetto. They are not refined, rational people like us from the UWI who can make conscious choices and go against the grain of our environment." I am showing more respect to them than their supposed supporters because I am holding them responsible for their actions and am saying that they can lead rather than instinctively follow their impulses or social conditioning.
There are artistes who live in the ghetto, experience the same debilitating, frustrating and exploitative conditions and who are repeating positive lyrics and, indeed, speaking against the negative values which those conditions engender. Coming from the ghetto is no excuse for disrespectful, intolerant, boorish and crude behaviour. The patronising of ghetto people is the ultimate disrespect.
Then there is the view that the artistes who talk about the gun are merely talking about what they see; essentially, they are reporters who are telling us in "society" what is really taking place; it is not that they are promoting violence; no more than the CVM and TVJ reporter is promoting violence by describing in graphic details the crime news. Nonsense. I wonder whether these UWI intellectuals and others really listen to the words in the dancehall lyrics. Some of the middle-class people who say I am too harsh on the deejays have no idea what is being said. (I have been to Sting many times). I have challenged them before to go to Half-Way Tree or downtown and get a Stone Love or Bass Odyssey cassette. Go and ask the fellow to sell you a dancehall cassette with gun lyrics and slackness on it. Then you come and reply to me after. Not before.
Let me quote from one I bought just last week. A deejay boasts in one track:
"Dem run but dem never reach far;
Dem never know mi have mi gun inna mi car.
See it deh now,
dem a go splash pon the tar.
Is that "reflecting reality" or promoting, "bigging up" brutality and savagery? When people are killed savagely in this country, we wonder why and say these people are on drugs.
No. That is how bad man kill people. That's how they are praised and glorified in the dancehall. Bad man kill man and mek him marrow splash pon di ground.
The same media managers whose disc jockeys and writers are promoting artistes who glorify violence, are supporting programmes aimed at cutting down on reprisal killings - which represent a major percentage of the killings today.
But these managers don't know that when people in their organisations promote artistes who have the major influence on the unschooled, unchurched, unfathered youth in the inner-city, they are making it hard for these youth to walk away from vengeance.
Listen to another song from my Stone Love cassette:
"Dem dis man and feel like
we a go tek it and live down inna wi bed.
Dem must be lick dem head.
Dem man deh fi dead -
The boy fi dead for him inform the Fed."
How will the police get information to put away criminals when "informer" is the biggest enemy apart from the homosexual in the dancehall? So there you have the Peace Management Initiative and the Dispute Resolution Foundation preaching the virtues of turning the other cheek, letting sleeping dogs lie, forgiving, but when they leave the area, the youth have pounding in his ears day and night the deejays telling him he is just a "P-" if he runs away; that he is a bwoy for:
"You can't dis bad man -
you must be mad man!".
Want more Stone Love?
"We know say we a no God man
and we no mek man,
but still we will kill
if a we dem a set pon".
This is not just saying if you don't create employment and give us justice we will fight for it. It is not saying that your economic order is oppressive and exclusionary and therefore people are going to die by the gun.
No, that is what the UWI intellectuals and other myth-makers are telling the ignorant who don't know what takes place in the dancehall. They give the impression that it is revolutionary violence which the youth are preaching and they even say that Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, who are icons today, preached violence.
It is not the same. There is a difference between an artiste talking about using violence to achieve justice, equal rights and social reform - which the African National Congress (ANC) and other freedom fighters used - and someone promoting anarchistic, nihilistic violence. (Though I myself am a pacifist).
The UWI intellectuals should know better and if I were marking their essays I would flunk for them for analysis.
Many middle class persons, people in civil society, talk-show hosts who sometimes cozy up to these artistes and promote them, have no idea what they do in the dancehall and the deleterious effect they have on our poor youth who are victimised by this unjust society and doubly victimised by these deejays who fill their heads with values that make them candidates for early death.
The Government has to find a way to call in these deejays and their handlers, many of whom are respectable uptown people.
The deejays and their handlers want the respectability of society. They want the hype and the glory in the media. We in the media must take a stand against the deejays who promote violence, just as we take a stand against the dons who rule with terror.
Succeeding governments and the holders of power - including those in the private sector - must be blamed for tolerating a society which has produced such underdevelopment, poverty and alienation. I acknowledge this, so, intellectual colleagues, don't come with your trite, straw-man replies. Also, I am opposed to the debauchery and hedonism of Carnival. I am opposed to the promotion of violence by Hollywood. I am opposed to the slackness in rhythm and blues and the slackness in some rocksteady rhythms. So I have taken away a lot of the fallacious arguments you would come with and have set you to do some serious intellectual analysis.
And don't tell me unscientific nonsense that "It's just entertainment" and that the rhythm and music don't really have an influence on people. Oh yeah? I am not blaming deejays for crime. Politics and a host of socio-economic factors play a major part.
But dancehall culture reinforces those negatives and further marginalises and further victimise the poor, exploited youth by not instilling positive values in them.
Next week I shall return with more fire pon the dancehall. Meanwhile go to Sting and take a reality check.
